1 6 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



readily provable. In the hare or horse it assumes an immense size, 

 and it is very large likewise in that near neighbour of the kangaroos, 

 the koala. The explanation of the small coecurri of man and its 

 tubular appendage appears to be readily found, when we take into 

 consideration the development of this structure in lower life. Even 

 in some lemurs, these lower kith and kin of the monkeys, the 

 coecum is large and yet possesses the tubular addendum ; a fact show- 

 ing us that probably the extremity of the ccecum first degenerates, 

 and that the coecum itself lastly becomes rudimentary as a whole. 

 Occasionally, in man, the tubular appendage of this part of the 

 intestine may present us with a tolerable development ; Nature in 

 such a case reverting to the primitive condition. But as it exists 

 normally in man and the apes, we simply see in this modified part of 

 the digestive apparatus an additional proof of the work of variation 

 as that process has operated in the production of the highest forms 

 of quadruped life. 



Allied in its nature to the foregoing modification seen in the 

 production of man's frame, is another characteristic, wherein bone 

 and bloodvessel unite to produce a feature of higher existence. In 

 the bone called the humerus, which forms the single bone of the 

 upper arm in man, there is occasionally found a distinct passage 

 through which pass the great nerve and artery of the fore-arm. In 

 the normal and usual condition of the bone, a mere trace of the 

 passage in question exists ; but it becomes interesting to note that 

 the abnormal in man is the normal in lower life. That is to say, 

 even certain of the monkeys, not to speak of carnivorous animals 

 and the kangaroo tribe, possess the passage in its complete state for 

 protecting the artery and nerve of the lower part of the forelimb. 

 Occurring, as it occasionally does, in man, we see in the presence of 

 this passage another proof of reversion to a lower ancestry, So also, 

 another passage in the same bone is now and then seen in man, and 

 is a constant possession of lower quadrupeds, and often of some 

 monkeys. But the curious fact remains, that in the men of old, and 

 in primitive races, this latter passage was a very constant feature. 

 The plain inference seems to be that ancient man, standing nearer 

 to the animal ancestors of his race, naturally exhibited in fuller 

 details the belongings of his ancestry ; just, indeed, as Professor 

 Owen remarks, that the muscles of the human ear, already discussed, 

 " probably existed in normal size and force " in the primitive men of 

 the stone period. 



The early stages of human development, and the first beginnings, 

 so to speak, of the individual frame, present to the eye of science 

 certain very marvellous proofs of man's kinship with lower life. 

 Away backwards in the dim ancestral periods, when the lower types 

 were evincing their special tendencies towards the evolution of the 



